


Touch

by riddikulusgrin (klavgavtrash)



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Fluff Without Much Plot, M/M, Post-Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 09:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2304848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klavgavtrash/pseuds/riddikulusgrin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a moment, after the initial panic and fear, when it occurred to Kieren that this didn't feel like going rabid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch

**Author's Note:**

> This has almost undoubtedly been done before, but whatever. It was fun to write.

There was a moment, after the initial panic and fear, when it occurred to Kieren that this didn't feel like going rabid. After Amy’s death, his hands had started shaking, then he’d started blacking out, and then the Neurotiptyline just didn’t feel right, like it wasn't working like it used to, and Kieren thought that this was it. That this was the end. But then as he clambered into bed, dread filling his body like lead and leaving him exhausted, his fingers touched the fabric of his duvet and he stopped. 

He could feel the fabric, soft, supple, a little corse, perhaps, from over washing. The duvet cover he'd had for years, since before he rose. It was strangely familiar to the touch, after all this time, and for a second Kieren wondered if he was going to loose his mind rather than his self-control.

He reached out a tentative hand and touched the blank canvas on the desk near his bed. Rough, grainy. Again, familiar and comforting in a way he hadn't expected.

It seemed less like an illusion as he walked out of his bedroom and felt the change in the floor's texture under his feet. The slight change of temperature. He padded over to the bathroom, everything feeling brand new but exactly the same. The house he had lived in for most of his first life and all of his second. 

The cold tiles of the bathroom floor felt like ice to his feet, hyper-aware as he was to the drop in temperature. He went over to the mirror, which was no longer covered by a towel and hadn’t been for some time. He stared at his reflection in the mirror, thinking that he didn't look any different. Amy, when she had died, had looked different. He didn't register the significance of her eyes changing, not really, until this moment. Phillip had told him later that she had changed, that she had become human. He'd passed it off as the wishes of a grieving man and found solace in the fact that Amy had been happy when it'd ended. 

He ran the cold tap first, then the hot, plunging his hands into the rapidly filling basin and enjoying the feeling of lukewarm water engulfing his skin. He twisted the tap to stop the flow of water, then wiggled his submerged fingers. Little silver arches of water rose and fell, and in his growing euphoria, even that had more significance. He pulled the plug and let the water drain away, smiling. 

Almost compulsively, Kieren started running a bath. Jem knocked on the door when it was half full, and Kieren started. The house had been so quiet he had forgotten he wasn't alone. "Kier, are you in there? I need to brush my teeth."

He opened the door and stood aside. "Sorry."

Jem stalked past and grabbed her toothbrush, squeezing toothpaste on it as she spoke. "Whats up with you, then?"

"Nothing."

"Cut the shit, Kier." said Jem, with a grimace. "You never have baths, you told me it was too depressing not to feel the water properly."

Kieren swallowed. "I felt like one." 

Jem frowned at him over the toothbrush, then shrugged. "None of my business, I guess." And there it was, that cold edge that always accompanied his little sister’s words when she has been snubbed, or was having one of her bad days. He hated that cold edge, because it hadn't been there before the rising. 

"I was running a bath because I can feel things again." he said. Jem's toothbrush clattered into the sink. 

"You can feel?"

"Yes."

"Can you eat?"

"I don't know."

"Is this why you were passing out and acting all strange?"

“I think so."

Jem abandoned her toothbrush and crossed the bathroom to pull him into a tight hug, and Kieren blinked away the tears that immediately sprung in his eyes at the contact. "Fucking Christ, Kier, I thought you were dying!"

"So did I." he told the top of her head, his voice soft and slightly shaky in his effort not to start crying. Everything about the hug, rare in itself as it came from his sister, felt more than before. He could feel every press of fabric, every strand of Jem’s hair that tickled his chin. She stepped back only moments later. 

"Who've you told?" 

"Just you."

There was a familiar, teasing glint in Jem's eyes. "Not Simon?"

"No, not Simon yet." he said, confused, and then he cottoned on. "Oh."

"Oh indeed." said Jem, the echo of a laugh in her voice. “You have a boyfriend. Think of the advantages of proper touch."

"Jem!" he exclaimed, vaguely scandalised, and she laughed for real at that.

"I'm just saying!" she said, returning to the sink and picking up her toothbrush. "Now out, I need to use the loo."

Kieren waited outside the door for the moment, then crossed the hall into the living room, standing in the centre of the the carpet and wiggling his toes like a child. He ran his hands along the back of the sofa, the tabletop, the coats by the front door. Jem snorted when she found him. "Bathroom's free now. Go soak in special feelings or whatever it is you plan on doing."

"Dick." he said fondly, and Jem shot him a teasing smile as she left the room. 

 

 

He woke up late the next morning and took a moment to enjoy the feeling of sheer normality that washed over him. Getting up, he dressed with almost embarrassing care, hyper-aware of not only what the clothes looked like on him, but how they felt on his skin. He was, of course, being ridiculous. He saw Simon nearly every day, and to Simon this was a day like any other. 

He barely glanced in the mirror to check his hair, but stopped dead on seeing his own eyes. Had he forgotten to take his contacts out last night? No. He barely wore them anymore, and he certainly didn't sleep with them in now. He didn't think he was even wearing them yesterday. But his eyes weren't their usual white pinpricks.

He moved closer to the mirror and stared at his own reflection. No, that wasn't even the artificial brown of his contacts. Those were _his_ eyes staring back at him. His old ones. He wasn't quite sure what he thought of that, yet. It almost looked wrong, somehow, seeing his brown eyes without the orange glow of the coverup mousse or the blush of living skin, but he let it be and left for the kitchen.

"Morning Kier, foods on the table." said Steve, doing a very good job of not even wincing when he saw Kieren's coverup-free complexion. 

For the briefest of moments, Kieren wondered what would happen if he sat down and started eating. After all, he had no idea if he could eat now, but if his eyes had changed and he could feel, it wasn't much of a stretch. But then common sense caught up with him and he realised that a) he'd probably give his dad a heart attack, and b) the consequences if his hunch was wrong were pretty grim. So he shook his head.

"No thanks, Dad. I'm off to see Simon."

"This early?"

"Yeah. This early.”

“Well don’t be late for Sunday Lunch.”

“I won’t.”

He pulled his jacket from the rack by the door and headed off down the street on the short walk to Amy's - Simon's - bungalow, enjoying the sensation of the cool, late winter air on his face. 

Simon answered after two knocks, in an endearing state of sleepiness. His chest was bare and he was wearing flannel pyjama bottoms; Kieren couldn't help the small smile as he asked, "Am I too early?"

"No, come in. As you can see, I'm ready to go." he held out his hands and gestured to his clothing. Kieren chuckled, pulling Simon’s parka off the hook by the door and throwing it at him.

"Hurry up. I want to talk to you."

Simon did so obediently, vanishing into his bedroom without another word. Kieren followed after a few moments, comfortable enough around Simon that he stood in the doorway as Simon turned away from him, pulling a shirt over the black scar down his back and kicking off his flannel pyjamas in favour of pressed grey trousers. And Kieren and thought he was overdressed.

He crossed the room and pulled the tie out of Simon's hand a moment before he tried to put it over his neck. "We're going for a walk, not a formal dinner." he said, running the silken material through his fingers.

Simon opted for a jumper instead, then, and pulled on black loafers under Kieren's watchful eye. "You sounded like you had big news, I thought I'd dress for the occasion." he said when he spotted Kieren rolling is eyes at the tie in his hand.

Kieren resisted the urge to blurt out the word "nerd", figuring it'd be a tag hypocritical of him. 

Finally they were out, and walking down Roarton streets to the empty fields on the edge of the woods. He'd yet to properly enter those woods with Simon at his side, yet to show him the den that he and Rick had practically grown up in. Talking about Rick to Simon hurt his head, like it was his two worlds colliding. And anyway, now wasn't the time. 

So far, he'd resisted actually touching Simon, but as they reached a secluded spot just at the edge of the tree line, he turned and placed his palm on Simon's cheek. Simon stared at him in with the same mystified expression that had, in the past, made Kieren uncomfortable. His gaze was both faraway and scrutinising, and it made Kieren feel as though his very mind was being stared at. Jem, rather un-tactfully, had named it Simon's "lovesick stare" when he'd done it in her presence. 

He wasn't focusing as much on that as usual though, too distracted by the way every nerve ending seemed to crackle as he touched Simon's cool skin. He felt wholly, truly alive for the first time and he knew he was smiling. Simon, ever stoic, did nothing but study his face as Kieren ran a finger along his cheekbones, down his nose, around the sockets of his eyes. When he ran a finger around the shape of Simon's lips, marvelling at the subtle change in texture, Simon mumbled something. Kieren pulled his hand away.

"Your eyes are different." said Simon, "Did you change contacts?"

"No." he said, "These are my eyes."

Simon took a great intake of breath. 'You've been changing." 

"I thought I was turning rabid, but I wasn't. I think my body was walking up again or something, I think I'm beginning to live again."

Kieren had expected Simon to stumble away in horror, or to cheer, or to kiss him, or to do anything other than what he did, which was nothing. No reaction. All actions offline, Simonbot power down.

“Simon? Say something.”

Simon remained quiet for a few more seconds, staring somewhat disconcertingly at him, and then asked quietly but urgently, “Are you safe?”

He blinked, then suddenly remembered the incident where two workers from Halperin  and Weston had been arrested trying to dig up Amy’s grave less than 24 hours after she’d been buried. Obviously, Amy’s newfound humanity had been something of an anomaly to the scientists, and now he had become just as interesting to them. 

Kieren had never gone to Shirley about his hands shaking, rationalising it to himself that she had enough on her plate, but really to avoid seeing Phillip. So he didn’t see how anyone from Halperin and Weston would know.

“I think so.” he said, “I don’t see how anyone could have found out.”

Simon seemed to visibly relax, and leaned in so his words were almost directly in Kieren’s ear. “Lets hope so.”

Ok, and that wasn’t fair, because Simon knew exactly what he was doing. Kieren stepped back, and sure enough, the corner of Simon’s lip was quirked up, teasing. “So everything is more intense than before?” he said.  He raised his eyebrows significantly. _“Everything?”_

The smirk on Simon’s face grew slightly as he took another step towards him, and Kieren rolled his eyes. “It’s not changed for you.” he pointed out, shivering slightly as Simon pushed some hair from his forehead. “And shouldn’t you be worrying? I might not be undead for much longer, for all we know.”

“I’ll get my turn to feel again soon enough.” murmured Simon, “And as for the latter, we’ll deal with that problem as it comes.”

Kieren’s laugh was a little bitter. “Sure you’re ok with dating a pulse-beater?”

“I’ll manage.”  said Simon, shifting, if possible, even closer. Kieren could feel Simon’s breath on his face as he looked up at him. That was new, and it was also incredibly distracting. 

“You might not like me human.” said Kieren, with no real conviction. Before, he might really have worried about that, but this was the Simon who’d sabotaged the second rising for him. 

Simon chuckled, pressing his lips lightly to KIeren’s forehead. The sensation bought fresh sparks to Kieren’s skin. He stood on tiptoes and kissed Simon’s lips quickly, experimentally. Easily more pleasant than before. He did it again, enjoying Simon’s raised eyebrows as he showered him in rapid, closed-mouthed kisses. There was something much more satisfying about them before, where their contact was barely felt unless he let it linger. 

Making a little noise in the back of his throat, Simon’s hands caught Kieren as he pressed another kiss to his lips and held him there, deepening the kiss. 

It only lasted several seconds, but when Kieren broke away he was breathing heavily. “Good?” asked Simon, his expression a mask of innocence. 

“Better.” he said. Then, making a decision on the spot, he turned on his heel and walked into the woods, inwardly grinning when he heard the footsteps that meant Simon was indeed following without question. 

“Where are we going?” asked Simon, catching up to walk by his side. 

“There’s a place I used to go with - with Rick Macy. I want to show you it.”

“Isn’t that were you…?” Simon trailed off, but his question was clear.

“It’s were I died.” 

Simon nodded, and fell silent, apparently anticipating a sombre mood. But that was wrong, because Kieren was showing him this because he was _happy_. So he turned around and pulled him into a lingering kiss. “None of that. I’m showing you because I care about you and want you to know about my past.” 

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.” said Simon then, deadpan, and Kieren nodded. Which was a good thing, he thought as they walked, because if they’d done the walk in silence he would almost certainly have lost his nerve.

 

 

At first, sitting in the den with Simon was just inexplicably weird. Seeing him on the floor, leaning against the wall just like Rick used to, face illuminated by candlelight, felt wrong. Like the present was colliding head-on with the past. But the feeling faded as they talked and Simon proved himself to be be so different to the boy who used to sit where he now sat.

Simon told him about his past, his face stony, his voice only wavering when he spoke of his father, of how his father threw him out. Then Kieren talked about Rick and Bill Macy, and his voice shook far more than Simon’s as he recounted how he, Rick and Phillip had once been so close. “And then Rick joined the army and it all fell to shit.” he said. It felt good to tell Simon himself, even though he knew Simon had heard parts of it from Amy. He couldn’t make it through the whole story, up to Rick’s second life, without the tears that trickled down his face. Simon was at his side in an instant, wiping them away with a rough thumb, and Kieren found himself laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. 

There was the tug of a smile in Simon’s voice, “What?”

‘It’s just…” Kieren chewed the words over in his mind. “I’m happy. I’m sad, yeah, but I don’t want to- when Amy died I didn’t even consider- _leaving_.”

Simon nodded, and Kieren knew he’d grasped his meaning. “I’m glad you didn’t leave, there’s so much to stay for. We both could’ve done with knowing that earlier.”

The small amount of natural light that filtered into the cave had shifted, and Kieren would guess it was already the afternoon. He had no particular desire to move from this spot, where Simon was replacing sour memories with soft ones, but he’d promised his parents he wouldn’t go AWOL without good reason, not after the last few times. 

“I should be getting back.” he said, pushing himself into an awkward crouch. “I told Jem I’d only be gone a few hours.” 

Simon clutched his hand, “Can you be gone a few more?” his voice was lightly pleading, and fuck if that didn’t weaken his resolve, but he wanted - needed - his parents trust, and he couldn’t bear their reaction if he were to be gone for hours because he’d been hiding in the den. 

“You could come with me, Simon.” he said, his tone teasingly bright. “Fancy another Sunday lunch with the fam?”

To his surprise, Simon considered it. “Will Gary be there?”

“Nah, he and Jem broke up ages ago. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

Simon gave an exaggerated sigh and stood up, or at least, crouched, his head scraping the low ceiling. “Sue and Steve have been very kind to me. I suppose I could make an appearance.”

Kieren grinned and started to blow out the candles. Simon helped, and when the cave was dark Kieren caught Simon’s lips with his own again, discovering his new sense of touch seemed more intense with one of his other senses missing.

Needless to say, they were late to Sunday lunch.


End file.
